After Avada
by yuppieflu
Summary: Remus thinks of the dead. So many gone. There is guilt and old memories like stones uncovered with the pale creatures that are his sorrow resting underneath. There is purification and forgiveness, the taste of blood and the man that is Harry.
1. Ruptured

-1Remus thinks he has not felt this warm since James died.

Remus thinks he has not felt this warm since Sirius died.

So he stops thinking and starts existing.

When James was put into the ground and Sirius was on the run, in Azkaban, and then gone, this was when the memories would come. One memory and then two, three, four, fifdlksjfsdlkajf… Then would come so freaqutly they were uncountable. Numbers would no longer have a meaning, they would fall apart and start becoming meaningless bits of sound.

Remus, he would hear James' laugh as he looked into the fire he had lit for no reason. Perhaps to satisfy some primal urge. Animals strayed from fire, maybe the wolf inside would hibernate if he built it bright enough, hot enough. He would look at it and hear Prongs, his antlers shadow in between the flames, laughing so loud and big and hard. Always so happy, so full of light.

He would close his eyes in a mockery of sleep and Sirius, his face would swim before his eyes. Surprised and strangely relived in the moment of his death, for he could finally stop searching out the Reaper's face in the shadows.

When Remus looks in mirrors it was always on purpose. He wanted to see Peter's face looking back at him and he did, in the mirrors. It let him know that he should have known. He hated Peter more then he hated himself. His blood and bone should have broken and burned under the force of Remus' spells. Wormtail should have been his and only his to kill. To murder.

Looking at Peter brought him to Lily. Lily sweet Lily; she was everyone's flower. She was the mother he had never had to hold. Lily could care like no one he had ever met, anyone he had yet to meet.

When Remus was down in the common room, keeping the wolf away with fire, after the moon, when he would turn phrases over in his head about what would have happened if he wasn't what he was. Would his mother love him again? His father look at him without crying. Would the blame be gone? The guilt from his shoulders? Lily, she would see him, she always saw him, and she would hold him and tell him that everything may not be alright now but that he would always have her. She would always be there for him without fail.

Such were the red and gold.

But she was dead now, was she not? Dead, dead, dead and gone, gone, gone. Out of his reach.

Lily brought him to Harry.

Sometimes, once in a while, he would rather Harry be dead then Padfoot. All the time, every waking moment, there was that ach in him that said: "Yes, Harry should have died." All of it was his fault. Only if he hadn't been so uncontrollable and impulsive, Padfoot could have still been alive and breathing and living to die. If only he had loved a little bit less.

The wolf inside, the one that didn't fear fire no matter what, wanted to hunt Harry down like prey and hurt him. Severely. Inside it tugged on his ribs, his heart; wanted, no, demanded, him to find him and take his own hands and rip his own chest open. Let Harry see the pain that ate at his heart, his organs, like a corrosive acid. Like silver.

Harry should be on the ground looking up at him. Not Lily's eyes, her green green green stare, never hers. Harry's eyes, the winding, turning gaze that was his own color. Iris' tainted the color of _Avada Kedavra_.

The human in him, it folded up in himself and waited for the moon with one eye on the window as his hands turned over old memories like stones, uncovering the pale creatures that where his sorrow underneath.

The moon took forever to ripen, it seemed. The wolfsbane waned over the months but there was no chance of more. Snape was gone too.

So he cleaved, ripped and wrenched himself apart under that swollen, pregnant moon.

Not because he yearned to be gone, to be with Sirius and James and Lily because he did but the wolf didn't know that. Blood was what it wanted, meat and if it couldn't have it would have the next best thing. The taste of it. Himself.

The human that was not heard in him, found itself not minding. Maybe if it bled enough, became clean enough, hurt enough, God --whomever-- would give him a break. That was all he wanted. A break.

When the transformation was over and he had not yet opened his eyes what he first feels is unmentionable. But he feels the warmth and for a second everything is okay.

But that second is over and he's back in a billion little pieces.


	2. Jerusalem

Remus dreams he is not alone in this darkness. In this absence of light and thought. His eyes move and swim under his lids, caught in the net of REM. Looking for something to hold onto.

But there is nothing.

Except a well-remembered heat. A thermal energy that does nothing to warm his body but everything for his soul. It is everything that is missing from him now. If he was awake his eyes would burn and nose itch and throat clench.

But he's not awake and not alone.

There is now a sick and desperate, forbidden thought that forms and its deadly teeth are eating away at him for he can never have this again.

Sleep dulls the bleeding, ripping, and gnawing of his insides and makes him forget that dreaming this, that some one is with him, is a thing never to be done.

For now, in this moment, there is only peace.

Everything, the blackness, is warping, changing into to something utterly familiar. A time he has lived, an experience had.

Remus smells them first before he sees them, the two figures so tangled up in each other he thinks they make up one being. Breathing, feeling, thinking as one.

He thinks that in this dream it should be snowing, so it does, outside the window while the inside stays a warm den of flame and things he has felt.

The two people, so wrapped up in each other he can not tell were one ends or starts, he realizes, that he is one of them and Padfoot the other. It becomes hard to remember that this is not a dream because the rush of recollection is so very perfect and full, he can swear that he is alive and siamesed with Sirius. Joined everywhere, chests expanding as one, being held by some one so very dear to him.

It like dreaming or thinking about the question "Why?" or God or metacognition. Unfathomly impossible to wonder about without feeling like a snarled mess.

He will become sick with yearning. Remus will awake and expel everything he has ever consumed, even though he can never remember eating. Food is foreign now, something he can't bother to think about with out cramps wrenching up his insides. So he will dry heave because there is nothing really there except acid and that meataly tastes in his dry, now always speechless mouth until there is nothing left to leave him. All that will remain is his tender skin on the inside of his mouth being sour and his teeth enamel being eaten away from bile. He won't rinse it out because he could care less.

Breathing will then become hard, his ribs locked in that hold of grief. Chills will make him cold and empty. Hot and then cold, more cold and then hot again. His skull, white bones fully fused together because he has not been a child for a long, long, time, will ache, everything inside it hurting.

But for now there is none of the illness, jus the dream and the waning moon.

The sun and hurt and awareness will all come later and he will fall to his knees like Jerusalem, a city repenting, and give in.


End file.
